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Happy Birthday

I celebrated my 47th birthday at the airport. I just arrived from Jakarta via Singapore and waited for my bags to come out. When it did, it was past 12 midnight and it was time to celebrate my birthday. It was on Saturday and I was tired. I just wanted to go home knowing that I have to attend the Israk Mikraj function at the ICC in the morning and then a farewell dinner in the evening. Celebrating my birthday was the last thing in my mind.

I was really surprised and touched when my colleagues and friends at MOD surprised me with a cake at the end of the farewell ceremony for our former minister. There was a cake and both my wife and I blew the candles. Thank you guys.

In fact it has been years since I last really celebrated my birthday. A couple of birthday dinners with the family here and there but not real celebrations. Certainly not with a cake and with lots of people singing Happy Birthday. My wife and I with our 10 year old son, would generally celebrate it somewhere quiet. Both my wife and I are Cancerians, and it was easier celebrating ours at the same time.

Sometimes I wonder why we celebrate birthdays? Especially as we grow older, it becomes less fun. Do we celebrate it because we survived another year? Another year in our cumulative achievements?

I see birthdays as I see milestones along the highways and the roads we traveled. Each one an indicator of how far you have traveled but more importantly how nearer you are to your destination. In a way birthdays are celebrations of surviving another year.

But birthdays are also reminders how close you are to the end of your journey. Who knows you might not even see the end of your journeys and you could end your journey any time. Birthdays are time to stock of yourself and to be muhasabah diri. To remember how mortal you are. How prepared you are for the end. It is also a time to look back and remember the fun you had with your family around you. Watching the family and children grow. They will replace you and hoped that you had left enough knowledge and ability for them to have grown up and be able to become responsible parents one day.

DESPITE first making its appearance in the Sultanate during the 1940s, Kuih Mor continues to be a household favourite today as a tea time snack or festive treat particularly during Hari Raya Aidil Fitri.

Siti Norhafizah Hj Bagol, a final year student at Universiti Brunei Darussalam who researched on Kuih Mor as part of her Brunei Traditional Industry module, said the three-ingredient sweet treat may have existed in Brunei as early as the 1940s when padi was known to have been grown to make different food items.

Over time, the cookie has also become a popular door-gift choice often handed out at Malay weddings or gatherings, said Siti Norhafizah.

Made with flour, oil and granulated sugar which have been ground into a powder, the bite-sized biscuits have a crumbly texture and are coated with powdered sugar.

The age-old technique of making Kuih Mor by hand has however changed over the course of time, with many now opt…

BY COMMAND of His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah ibni Al-Marhum Sultan Haji Omar ‘Ali Saifuddien Sa’adul Khairi Waddien, Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam, the Prime Minister’s Office hereby announces that His Majesty has consented to the transfer and appointment of the following senior officers – Dato Paduka Haji Mohd Juanda bin Haji Abdul Rashid, Permanent Secretary (Law and Welfare) at the Prime Minister’s Office as well as the Director of Anti-Corruption Bureau and Solicitor General has been transferred to the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports as the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports; and Datin Elinda binti Haji CA Mohamed, Special Senior Duties Officer, Ministry of Home Affairs has been appointed as Permanent Secretary at the Prime Minister’s Office and Director of Anti-Corruption Bureau.